Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒ Suzumiya Haruhi) is the founding member of the SOS Brigade with the purpose of finding aliens, time travelers and espers. Although she doesn't know it, all the members of the SOS Brigade she recruits, besides Kyon, happen to fit into these groups (Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, and Itsuki Koizumi respectively). She is incredibly eccentric and anti-social, with no interest in "ordinary" humans. She also, unknown to her, has the god-like abilities to change, destroy, and reshape reality. It is said that if she were to become bored enough with the world, she could simply erase it and start a new one. After revealing themselves to Kyon, the trio of Yuki, Mikuru and Koizumi all state they were sent by their respective higher-ups to watch over her, and Koizumi specifically mentions they must keep her entertained so she doesn't become too bored. Description Haruhi is a bright, energetic and athletic high-school student. Many male students consider her attractive. She alternates between melancholy and incredible optimism, often unpredictably. Her behavior was considered eccentric, and she had little interest in her classmates, at least until Kyon "convinced" her to form the SOS Brigade. Afterward, she became more mentally stable and gradually connected with schoolmates in club activities. First in Snow Mountain Syndrome and later in The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, it is mentioned she is good at cooking. Haruhi reveals that the reason why she is good at cooking is due to her mother having "awful taste" and always measuring ingredients and spices by the eye causing every meal she makes to "never taste quite the same each time" so in primary school (elementary school) Haruhi attempted to cook on her own and found that she had somewhat of a natural talent for it and insisted on cooking her own meals ever since. Her mother's low cooking skills are also the reason why Haruhi never brings a lunchbox to school. Interestingly enough, this all of the information Haruhi reveals (with reluctance) about her mother upon mentioning her for the first time other than saying "She works a lot, and so we help each other out." 'Biography' When Haruhi was in sixth grade, she went to see a baseball game with her parents and was shocked by the sheer amount of people attending. After finding out that the large amount was only a small piece of the entire world, and realized that she was only a small part of it, Haruhi believed herself to be ordinary, and deduced that if there is someone out there with an interesting life that it should be her. This results in Haruhi's desire to find strange things. In middle school, East Junior High, Haruhi becomes known for several things, such as putting talismans up around school, dating and often immediately dumping every guy who asks her out, and, most notably, drawing a huge graffiti mural on the field on the night of Tanabata. Kyon was actually the one who drew this under Haruhi's orders after he and Mikuru traveled back in time. Thanks to the dark, Haruhi could not make out his face, and so Kyon used the alias "John Smith" to further keep himself secret. "John Smith" implied to Haruhi that there were strange things out there and that there might be interesting people at North High, inspiring her to attend the school. When Haruhi attends North High, she meets Kyon, the first person there to openly talk to her. She takes an interest in him because he reminds her of John Smith, and eventually drags him into creating her new club, the SOS Brigade. By seizing a room used by Yuki Nagato to use as their club room and abducting Mikuru Asahina and Itsuki Koizumi to join her club, Haruhi unknowingly drags the exact types of people she wants into her life. When Haruhi sees Kyon wrestling with Mikuru over a computer mouse, she becomes jealous and creates an alternate reality (a closed space) in which she and Kyon are the only inhabitants. This becomes a threat, as the new world would possibly replace the old world. By kissing her, using clues from Yuki and a future Mikuru, Kyon convinces Haruhi to bring the old world back. Haruhi thus becomes a participant in many activities surrounding her that she does not understand: the SOS Brigade wins a competition by modifying a bat; a logo for the SOS Brigade that she creates awakens an ancient data lifeform; she causes time to loop over and over because she does not want summer to end; she confuses the fictional world with the real world while filming a movie, causing the movie's events to come true; Yuki must hack into a computer game in order to satisfy her desire to win it; the world is altered, creating an alternate version of her with no powers; a mysterious alien entity traps her and the SOS Brigade in a strange mansion; a Mikuru from eight days later appears behind her back; a new potential god is revealed as Kyon's friend Sasaki. In her second year, Haruhi starts to accept new first-year recruits into her Brigade, but is picky about who enters; she kicks out who she wants and challenges those who have the guts to return to the brigade room. When Yuki mysteriously falls ill, Haruhi organizes the rest of the brigade to go rescue her. In The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, she shows a much more human and even motherly side when she cooks and makes remedies for the ailing Yuki. Her intuition skills also show that she possibly thinks/knows that Yuki does not have a simple cold. 'The Future' In "Editor-In-Chief★Straight Ahead!", it is revealed that Haruhi was the one to create the central foundation for the time plane theory, eventually resulting in Mikuru's ability to time travel. Because Haruhi lives next door to the boy who is implied to have created Mikuru's TPDD, Kyon realizes that it is possible for the boy to have seen the theory and thus create the mechanism. Middle School Haruhi Little Haruhi, in 7th grade, debuts in Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. She is seen trespassing into East Junior High. She is referred to as The Mysterious Little Girl. The main plot of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya revolves around her and the events in Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody on July 7th, three years ago from when the story starts. 'Alternate Haruhi' Alternate Haruhi appears in the Disappearance arc. She does not attend North High, but instead attends Kouyouen School with Itsuki Koizumi. She becomes a key player in this arc, and helps Kyon to return to his former world. When Kyon tells her about espers, time travellers, and aliens, she believes him and helps gather all the members of the brigade, allowing Kyon to go back in time to Tanabata, 2007. Powers Haruhi has the ability to create reality (or "data"), but the power is unconscious and she is unaware of it. Just by thinking, she can alter reality. Sometimes this manifests as the ability to make something of her desires truly exist, such as closing off a remote island with fog (to enhance the atmosphere of a murder mystery). When she is overjoyed, her abilities have changed the weather, made animals speak and even changed the orbit of the Earth. When her emotions become unstable, she subconsciously creates closed space and celestials which begin to take over the world, destroying things. Agency espers such as Itsuki Koizumi believe it is their duty to destroy the celestials, restoring normal space. Koizumi said that the system was born of "common sense"; Haruhi encloses the celestials in closed space to prevent destruction in the "real world". According to Itsuki Koizumi, Haruhi's powers created espers like himself, time travel and even aliens such as Yuki Nagato. (This is in contrast to time traveler Mikuru Asahina, who vehemently disagrees with this. Nagato stated that her organization, the Integrated Data Sentient Entity, existed even before humanity, which would conflict with Koizumi's statement as well.) Koizumi said that Haruhi has the power to create a new world (destroying the old one in the process) and the "current world" came to exist as a result of Haruhi's power. As a result, some of the Agency believes Haruhi to be a "god". While Koizumi initially said he might agree with this statement, he later admitted to being a skeptic, saying that if she were a god, she could not live in this world without becoming self-aware, but since Suzumiya lives in the world she can alter without noticing, Koizumi concludes that she can only alter the world to a certain extent. He states that Haruhi does not really believe in espers, aliens and time travelers, and they only exist because she subconsciously wishes them to do so. If she ever became aware of them, or other strangeness such as "talking cats", she would recreate the world in such a way that talking cats made sense. Koizumi feared this would "overthrow all the concepts already known to mankind". Koizumi believes that someone granted Suzumiya these powers, but also prevented her from knowing about them. This entity is more likely to be a god. "The reality right now may be a failed product of creation, and perhaps Suzumiya-san was given the mission to amend this flawed world." If the world were recreated, humanity could be wiped out, but this hasn't happened, due to her consciousness leaning toward creation rather than destruction. If her mentality became negative, she might focus on destruction. Koizumi prefers to live in the "current" world despite its problems, as humans would eventually sort them out. According to time traveler Mikuru Asahina, "Suzumiya-san does indeed possess the power to change the 'present,' but I don't think she has the ability to reconstruct the world. This world has been this way since the beginning, it's not created by Suzumiya-san." Sasaki has similar abilities, signifying that Haruhi is not the only one with these powers. Esper Kyouko Tachibana believes that Sasaki originally had these powers, but they were "stolen" from her and given to Haruhi instead. Tachibana wishes to recover this power. Relationship with SOS Brigade members Kyon Kyon was the first person Haruhi ever spoke with in high school. Of all characters in the series, Kyon is Haruhi's sole voice of reason, and is the only person Haruhi will ever take advice from, such as making her forfeit their team place in the baseball tournament, adding a fiction disclaimer for the SOS Brigade movie, and convicing Haruhi to revert the universe back to its normal state. Haruhi is implied to have unrequited feelings for Kyon, although she maintains that love is a sort of mental illness. It has been reccuringly shown that Haruhi becomes irritated whenever it is even implied that Kyon is interested in or is the subject of interest of a girl, likewise when she accidentally reads a confession of love to Nagato that seemed to have been written by Kyon she immediately erupts into fury. In the film version of the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya the alternate Koizumi theories that she does in fact hold romantic feelings for Kyon given that she willingly opened up to him despite him seemingly being completely ordinary. Though this is not outright stated in the film it is all but confirmed when Koizumi states she "...ves you" with the beginning being cut off from Kyon and the viewers by a train speeding past, as a result it is heavily he was going to say Haruhi loves Kyon. In the same story Koizumi (the real one) also note that he had never seen Haruhi so distressed when Kyon falls down a flight of stairs and ends up in a coma, she subsequently spends the next three days with Kyon in the hospital even bringing a sleeping bag with her. The implied unrequited feelings ironically coincide with the fact that Kyon is the only one in the entire series who seems to be immune to Haruhi's powers and has always been aware of the changes Haruhi has done to the universe. Kyon's immunity plays to Haruhi's frustrations, as she has shown in both the novel and anime that she cannot force Kyon to respond to her inner feelings or desires like the rest of the universe does. In fact, on multiple occasions, Haruhi's attempts to interact with Kyon on a deeper level seems to be thwarted by the same world that bends to her will, such as Haruhi's failed attempt to go on a date with Kyon during the SOS Brigade search several times, and Haruhi trying to throw grass at Kyon, only to have the wind blow it back at her. Regardless, Haruhi's relationship with Kyon has often been described as an unbreakable bond of trust. It is because of this bond that Haruhi chooses Kyon to be the only being to be with her when she attempts to recreate the universe, despite knowing Kyon for such a short amount of time. Haruhi often exploits Kyon's apparent (to her) lack of imagination. Anytime she has a task that would be complicated by somebody else's creativity, she'll assign that task to Kyon. Examples include drawing a message on the school quad, converting an image and uploading it to a website and going to pick up a room heater without picking apart the deal she made for it. She is shocked whenever he manages to mess up such simple tasks. Mikuru Asahina Haruhi views Mikuru more as an object for boy appeal than a person, which is most clearly defined in The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya when she declares Mikuru to be her toy even in a serious fight. Haruhi often dresses up Mikuru in cosplay outfits or sexually harasses her. Haruhi believes that any resistance from Mikuru is "futile" and had no compunctions about going to her house and "abducting" her to play her role in her movie when she claimed she was ill. She is also somewhat hostile because she believes Kyon has a crush on Mikuru. Yuki Nagato Although Yuki is technically a member of the Literature Club, Haruhi includes Yuki in the Brigade. Haruhi perceives Yuki as a gullible and vulnerable girl, even though the opposite is true. Haruhi also values Yuki's presence in the Brigade, exemplified when Kyon tells Haruhi a false story about Yuki possibly having to move away and Haruhi threatens to give "Yuki's parents" a piece of her mind. Haruhi has taken a protective (also egotistical) role over Nagato. When she thought Nagato had gotten sick in Snow Mountain Syndrome, she insisted on carrying her (over Nagato's protests). She also defended Nagato's Literature Club from the Student Council President, and when Nagato got sick in The Dissociation, she ordered the Brigade to report to her apartment daily to take care of her. She has on occasion showed jealously toward Nagato's relationship with Kyon, seeming irritated during club events when she spent time alone with him. Itsuki Koizumi Haruhi brings Itsuki into the SOS Brigade because he fulfilled her supernatural expectation of a "mysterious transfer student". Even though Kyon sees it as overly obvious that Itsuki is only being a kiss-up, Haruhi laps up all the compliments and agreements Itsuki throws at her. Haruhi also seems to believe whatever Itsuki says, as he was easily able to convince her that she went under self-hypnosis in "Snow Mountain Syndrome". Haruhi may be the least suspicious of Itsuki, because he is the brigade member who is the most careful to not "hit on" Kyon when Haruhi is watching. (Mikuru is too clumsy and Yuki lacks the empathy to see the problem.) Voice Actress Haruhi's Japanese voice actress, Aya Hirano, won the "Voice Acting Award" in the Sixth Annual Tokyo Anime Awards and a nomination for the "Best Actress in a leading role" category from the first Seiyū Awards. In the English dub her voice actress is Wendee Lee; she also does Haruhi's voice while she sings in the episode Live Alive. es:Haruhi Suzumiya Category:Characters